Principles: Life and Work
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * 5 MILLION COPIES SOLD
“Significant...The book is both instructive and surprisingly moving.” —The New York Times
Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business—and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio—who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood—that he believes are the reason behind his success.
In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book’s hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency,” include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating “baseball cards” for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses, and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve.
Here, from a man who has been called both “the Steve Jobs of investing” and “the philosopher king of the financial universe” (CIO magazine), is a rare opportunity to gain proven advice unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press.
“Significant...The book is both instructive and surprisingly moving.” —The New York Times
Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business—and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio—who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood—that he believes are the reason behind his success.
In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book’s hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency,” include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating “baseball cards” for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses, and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve.
Here, from a man who has been called both “the Steve Jobs of investing” and “the philosopher king of the financial universe” (CIO magazine), is a rare opportunity to gain proven advice unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press.
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Community Reviews
A masterclass on productive thinking, accountability, radical transparency, and building disciplined organizational thinking.
This was fine.
The author is an impressive dude who has made a lot of money and built an interesting hedge fund. He lays out a thoughtful approach for how you can make yourself a lot more like a computer and - though you can’t get all the way there, not yet at least - you can certainly get much closer. And being more like a computer certainly seems useful for at least some purposes, so good. He has codified this approach into a very long list of principles which he admits should serve more as a reference than anything else.
But an important question as you read these principles is: are these just a way to do self improvement (easier to believe) or could you really build a whole organization around just these ideas and would that really work and be somewhere where people really dispassionately adhered to this approach? Can you really just write politics and personal influence out of the script of how organizations work by putting the right processes in place? The author clearly thinks the answer is both.
That brings about the weakest part of the book is the section on his personal transition out of bridgewaters leadership. You sort of get the sense the author may be kidding himself that his organization is actually governed by principles outside of his own personal control or ever will be.
He sort of has to conclude that his organization is governed by principles like this - because it’s literally the title of the book and the whole basis of his personal and organizational philosophy. But like, if it were he would not have to keep coming back to run it. So you sorta wonder. He explores this dissonance in a fairly cursory way, probably because he hasn’t fully resolved it yet, but that’s exactly the sort of thing someone with his philosophy should own, full stop. Moreover, it’s the sort of thing that might lead you to question the jump from - this is a good way to organize my own life to this is a good way to coordinate an organization, which is a jump that he very much wants to make.
The author is an impressive dude who has made a lot of money and built an interesting hedge fund. He lays out a thoughtful approach for how you can make yourself a lot more like a computer and - though you can’t get all the way there, not yet at least - you can certainly get much closer. And being more like a computer certainly seems useful for at least some purposes, so good. He has codified this approach into a very long list of principles which he admits should serve more as a reference than anything else.
But an important question as you read these principles is: are these just a way to do self improvement (easier to believe) or could you really build a whole organization around just these ideas and would that really work and be somewhere where people really dispassionately adhered to this approach? Can you really just write politics and personal influence out of the script of how organizations work by putting the right processes in place? The author clearly thinks the answer is both.
That brings about the weakest part of the book is the section on his personal transition out of bridgewaters leadership. You sort of get the sense the author may be kidding himself that his organization is actually governed by principles outside of his own personal control or ever will be.
He sort of has to conclude that his organization is governed by principles like this - because it’s literally the title of the book and the whole basis of his personal and organizational philosophy. But like, if it were he would not have to keep coming back to run it. So you sorta wonder. He explores this dissonance in a fairly cursory way, probably because he hasn’t fully resolved it yet, but that’s exactly the sort of thing someone with his philosophy should own, full stop. Moreover, it’s the sort of thing that might lead you to question the jump from - this is a good way to organize my own life to this is a good way to coordinate an organization, which is a jump that he very much wants to make.
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